Art Smitten - The Podcast

Adalya, Daniel and Jim interview director Miki Oikawa, Tenor Hew Wagner and Dancer/Actor Arisa Yura about Lyric Opera’s Australian premier production of The Japanese Princess.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Deep Sea Dances was a new contemporary dance work by Rebecca Jensen. The performance space is in The Stables are Arts Houses’ Meat Market, we entered into a large space with beautiful projections on the walls, we were asked to remove our shoes and socks and entered into another large space in the building, the floor was covered with squishy plastic and there were chairs and pillows either side of the long room to sit on. Deep Sea Dances was performed by a large ensemble of trans femme and trans women, and female identifying people, it was presented in what I felt like several ‘parts’. The performance began with a dance choreographed by Dorris Humpfry in 1928, she is often forgotten and her experimental choreography is often credited to men who created work in the 1950’s. After the dance was finished Rebecca came out and told us what we had just seen, acknowledged the traditional custodians of the land which we were viewing the work and announced Deep Sea Dances would now begin. A big roller door then open

Daniel, Adalya and Jim chat to Tara Jade Samaya, the “Dance Captain” of Chunky Move’s ANTI GRAVITY, on at the Malthouse Theatre from March 17-26 as part of the Dance Massive Festival.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Gill and Daniel chat to Sammy J about this new solo show Hero Complex, playing in the 2017 Melbourne International Comedy Festival at the Victoria Hotel.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Piece for person and Ghetto Blaster is an experimental dance work by Nicola Gunn. This work has had seasons all across Australia and overseas. It is a story of a man and woman and a duck. Piece for person and Ghetto Blaster goes for about and hour and a half and Nicola is on stage the entire time, constantly dancing and telling the story. Nicola is an absolutely phenomenal performer, just like nothing you would ever see anywhere else, her brilliant performance was complimented well by the wacky choreography of Jo Llyod. The story seems rather mundane and retelling it to someone, and it feels obvious what should happen. The story is: You’ve gone for a run in a foreign country and you see a man, with his children, throwing stones at a duck, and the question is: What do you do? The answer seems simple enough, you would go up to him and say stop doing that right? But that’s obviously not only what happens in Nicolas story because it goes for an hour and a half. There are many long tangents talking abo

Waiting in dark anticipation in La Mama theatre with foreboding music in the background, you could sense the experience of the director, Lloyd Jones, in non-text based performance theatre. Windows, written by Ayse Bayra-moglu, is a new work which has undertaken some swift development from play-reading to fully mounted performance in the last year. It still retains the casual essence of play-reading with the stage manager, Lisa Edman, announcing the scene and stage directions at the beginning of each scene. I thought this was a clever way to add to the audience's experience of rawness, and believe they could have taken it even further by having the two actors, Anna Ellis, who plays Esme, and Zac Kazepis who plays Huso, preparing in between scenes on the stage rather than hiding next to the seating banks where they could awkwardly be seen and heard quite clearly. Not having the luxury of wings could be used quite powerfully rather than ignored.   It's sometimes really difficult watching adults play childr

Rebi, Jim and Molly interview Rachael Beesley a solo violinist and musical director, performing in Italian Romance, an upcoming concert from the Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra, taking place at the Elisabeth Murdoch Hall of the Melbourne Recital Centre (MRC) on Friday March 24 and the City Recital Hall, Angel Place in Sydney on Saturday 25 March (both at 7.30pm) featuring Beethoven and Mendelssoh, and directing the Revolutionary Romance chamber concerts, featuring Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet, in Sydney on Sunday 17 September at 2.30pm and in Melbourne on Friday 22 September at 7.30pm.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Adalya and Daniel chat to Jessica Wilson about her new theatre show Passenger, which takes place on us a bus tour, departing from Footscray Community Arts Centre Thursday-Saturday and from the Arts Centre on Sunday. The show runs from March 23-26 as part of the Women of the World Festival Melbourne.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Adalya and Daniel chat to Miranda Picton-Warlow, manager of the VCE Season of Excellence and Sia Smyth, the curator of Top Designs 2017, which will be on display at Melbourne Museum from 18 March – 16 July 2017. Click here to listen to our interview with Cameron Moorhouse, one of the artists from Top Arts 2017.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ben interviews film director Rebecca Zlotowski about her latest feature, Planetarium, starring Lily-Rose Depp and Natalie Portman, which is being screened in the Alliance Française French Film Festival. Click here to listen to our interview with the festival's Artistic Director, Philippe Platel.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Gill interviews Megan Patty, the organiser of the Melbourne Art Book Fair, which runs from March 16-19.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

David Stratton is a pioneer in both critiquing films, and Australian films themselves. If you ever want to be a critic, you should take a good look at some of Stratton’s reviews, as they emphasis what is important about filmmaking, and how to perfectly break it down, dissect it, and give a professional opinion. David Stratton: A Cinematic Life, reveals a lot more about the man behind a critical perspective than you would ever imagine. However, it also reveals things that you could assume and gather from him, as a bit of Stratton is in every one of his reviews which have been in Variety, The Movie Show and At The Movies. Directed by Sally Aitken, the documentary does more than just explore David Stratton’s fascinating life; it gives a wonderful homage to Australian cinema, and how far its come over the years. The documentary is wonderfully broken down by certain Australian films, and how the both impact and reflect Stratton’s life. I feel bad saying that the majority of films on screen that a

Molly and Rebi interview Susan Provan, the director of the 2017 Melbourne International Comedy Festival, running from March 29 - April 23.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Logan is the brand new marvel film under the banner of 20th Century Fox, adding to the long running series of X-Men Films. Logan concludes the trilogy of Wolverine, the two previous films, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and The Wolverine, being mildly successful, but for the most part not critically rated very highly. This all changes with Logan, which has been met with massive praise, easily trumping the average reviews of the previous films. However, does the film really deserve the praise? I went into Logan ready for the best superhero film I’ve ever seen, as that is what I got from the reviews. I was prepared for the best Marvel film I’ve ever seen, and I’m not a big fan of marvel films. To begin, I agree wholeheartedly that Logan is the best film in the trilogy of Wolverine films. It deals with some very real issues, the acting is great from all performances, and it reflects on the long X-Men trilogy in a simple, brutal light. However, for myself, it was not the best superhero film I’v

The Dancer (or La danseuse) is the feature debut of French director Stéphanie Di Giusto starring Soko as the revolutionary dance pioneer Loie Fuller. To start with, this film is beautiful. In the locations, in the cinematography, in the dance - the film itself captures and mirrors the longing of the protagonist Loie Fuller for the beauty she is searching for in dance. The film opens in the American Rocky’s where she is living in the wilds with her mad french father who encourages her love of art and her seemingly odd desire to become an actress. There are some charming scenes of a wild maned Soko soliloquising into the air or at taxidermy, perhaps as a set up as the humble roots of greatness but to my view represented a sheer singleness of mind on focused on stardom. Men are quite appalling throughout the film and it is shot in such a way that Loie is suggested to only find ease and success in the companionship of women. There are some amazing scenes of her and her troupe of dancers frolicking th

Hamish, Christina and Rebi interview the new Artistic Director of the Alliance Française French Film Festival, running in Melbourne from March 8-30. Click here to listen to Ben's interview with Rebecca Zlotowski, director of Planetarium, one of the films in the festival.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Daniel reviews La Mama Theatre's production The Fever, by Wallace Shawn (of Toy Story and Princess Bride fame).See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hamish and Christian interview singer-actor Rhonda Burchmore, who’ll be performing in Morning Melodies at the Arts Centre of April 3, at 11am & 1.30pm.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Christian chats with artist Tristan Meecham, the ‘Marathon Man’ playing a starring role in the Fun Run at the Arts Centre on Sunday March 12 at 4.30pm.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Rebi, Molly and Jim chat with the members of Open Spatial Workshop, an artist group who's current exhibiton, Converging in time is on now at the Monash University Museum of Art until April 8.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.